# Top scientist Freeman Dyson says global warming isn't real. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 18, 2015, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986 "2015-10-18T07:37:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986/61 "2015-10-23T12:51:10Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > 1. Do you really think there is any chance that we will slow down or limit the amount of CO2, or even the rate at which it is increasing? I don’t. I think it’s a nonstarter. It seems to me that co2 emissions are pretty much inextricably linked to our industrial consumptive nature, and with a growing population and an industrializing third world,mi see no chance that this will slow down. How might I be wrong? If I’m right aren’t we thinking about this problem the wrong way. Maybe instead of futilely trying to slow down the amount of Co2 we are putting into the air, we could better lend our resources thinking about a way to take out the excess. If we can do that, than maybe we can undo some of the bad effects, and not have to sacrifice our living standards. Not really. The idea that we can extract 37 gigatons of CO2 out of the air every year is pretty fanciful. It’s in the same realm of thought that says we should go ahead and keep dumping CO2 into the air but dump some other stuff in there, too, that contributes to cooling. That one is not just fanciful but downright crazy dangerous. The reality is that no scalable technology to safely and realistically do these things is even on the horizon, while at the same time burning fossil fuels has other deleterious side effects. For instance an EU study showed that around 35,000 people die prematurely every year there from the effects of air pollution. It’s a mystery to me why we’re grasping at these sci-fi straws when clean, renewable energy **is** clearly within our technological means. > [@Scylla](#): > > 1. Dyson says that climate change might actually be beneficial. Maybe we lose islands, Bangladesh, New Orleans, and other low lying areas, but maybe we gain Greenland, or dare I say Antarctica, or more of Siberia, because Dyson says that global warming is not so much as making the equator or the dimmers hotter, but having its greatest effect on the most severe cold climates and winters. Climate change is maybe just that, neither good nor bad, but a mix of both. Is this wrong? Yes, it’s wrong. The idea that climate change is primarily characterized by a little bit’o’warmth is grossly misguided. The problem is that the rate of change is extreme and unlike anything seen in nature – during ice age transitions the climate takes thousands if not tens of thousands of years to transition through the kind of change we’ve forced on it in just the last century. Furthermore, the effects are just beginning to be felt. The beginning and end of ice ages is driven by a change in atmospheric CO2 of just around 100 ppm; we’ve already driven it 115 ppm higher than it has ever been since the dawn of humanity. The destabilizing effect on both the physical climate system and the biological ecosystem and its ability to adapt are both huge, leading to things like increasingly frequent extreme weather events, pest and disease migration, and the potential for massive food crop failures. And the negative repercussions are projected to be greatest in the poorest regions, such as Africa and other tropical areas, that are the least ecologically and economically resilient. > [@Scylla](#): > > 1. In answer to Measures argument about plants I looked up some cites about increased atmospheric exposure to co2 on plants that were outside. They call them FACE studies. For a wide variety of reasons, this isn’t felt to be promising. CO2-fertilized plants often have serious issues and are, moreover, quickly limited by other factors like soil nutrients. And the CO2 sequestration is short-term, within an active carbon cycle, while the stuff we’re dumping into the atmosphere comes from permanent sequestrations that are hundreds of millions of years old. * * * On the topic of the OP, Dyson is a formerly brilliant physicist who’s turned into a elderly crackpot – this sums it up pretty well: The problem is that Dyson says demonstrably wrong things about global warming, and doesn’t seem to care so long as they support his notion of human destiny. Brower reports that Dyson doesn’t consider himself an expert on climate change, has no interest in arguing the details with experts, and yet somehow knows that the experts don’t have any answers worth listening to. That doesn’t stop Dyson from making sweeping pronouncements, many of them so egregiously wrong that it would hardly have taken an expert to set him straight. > **[RealClimate: The Starship vs. Spaceship Earth](https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/the-starship-vs-spaceship-earth/)** > > RealClimate: Eric Steig & Ray Pierrehumbert One of my (Eric's) favorite old books is The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower It's a 1970s book about a father (Freeman Dyson, theoretical physicist living in Princeton) and son (George Dyson,... ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986/62 "2015-10-23T22:51:58Z")
Why do we focus on halting carbon emissions and predicting doom and all that if we don’t, and instead work on what we’ll do because of what we’re doing to the environment? We have these climate change models that will tell us what will happen if you continue to pump out carbon dioxide, great. We need to accept the fact that we will continue to do so as long as it is economically in the best interest of society, and be working on how we adapt to the new environment that we’re creating. Renewable sources of energy will go up in use as fossil fuels get more expensive and renewable technology gets better, but it will be entirely economic in nature. I doubt that very many people will be pressured to use less fossil fuels other than by pressuring their pocketbook. What good is it going to do to continue to scare people about the future when we have no way of enforcing what we want them to do? Focus on figuring out what is going to happen, and be prepared. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2015, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986/63 "2015-10-24T00:35:08Z")
> [@](#): > > NASA has admitted that it is unable to explain a 17-year hiatus in an average global temperature increase, which has led to 95% of manmade global warming projections being false. So far as NASA’s site is to be believed, there is no such thing. [![](https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif) ](https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif) So, I think the correct parsing of that sentence is that “NASA is unable to explain [why anyone would claim] a 17-year hiatus in an average global temperature increase”. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2015, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986/64 "2015-10-24T19:25:54Z")
Scylla’s questions have mostly been answered already better than I can, but I appreciate his (or her? Scylla was a female I think) willingness to engage in rational discussion. Also, I just like to feel useful. > [@Scylla](#): > > 1. Do you really think there is any chance that we will slow down or limit the amount of CO2, or even the rate at which it is increasing? I think asking for a massive change in lifestyle is an uphill battle, but I think it’s cheap energy that people are addicted to, not fossil fuels _per se_. Also, I do think slow change to lower consumption is possible over time, especially if people connect it with the well-being or even survival of the human race. > [@Scylla](#): > > 1. Dyson says that climate change might actually be beneficial. Maybe we lose islands, Bangladesh, New Orleans, and other low lying areas, but maybe we gain Greenland, or dare I say Antarctica, or more of Siberia It’s not the case of a simple swap. A lot of the areas that are too cold for agriculture now are also covered by glaciers, which have scraped the top soil completely away. The top soil could eventually come back, but that’s a really long eventually to a world where people need to eat every single day. Also, while the higher longitudes will receive more heat, they won’t receive more light in general and photosynthesis relies mainly on light in the visible spectrum. Antarctica is an extreme case. It receives no sunlight at all for 6 months of the year. If it someday reaches temperatures comparable to Nebraska today, do you think it would be able to grow as much corn? The oceans are also acidifying due to absorbing a percentage of the extra carbon in the atmosphere. I don’t see any positive trade off there. That is, there isn’t any ocean that isn’t currently acidic enough, so far as I know, or would benefit from being more acidic. > [@Scylla](#): > > Climate change is maybe just that, neither good nor bad, but a mix of both. Is this wrong? It’s an interesting point, but isn’t everything a mix of bad and good? A heart attack, for example, assuming it doesn’t kill you, forces you to focus more on what’s important in life. If it does kill you, well, maybe it reallocates assets to your heirs who would be more productive with them. In any case, I think the point is a red herring. If we had a way to increase atmospheric carbon that didn’t give the side effect of energy, would we be having a discussion of its pros and cons? Essentially, the argument that climate change has beneficial aspects only makes sense because we’re factoring in the energy we get against the net negatives. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2015, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986/65 "2015-10-26T01:45:55Z")
Thanks, Gigo, Measure, and Greg. I appreciate the answers. i don’t have any intelligent objections, or questions. The issues Dyson brought up don’t seem as pointed as they did. ---
**Author:** ![alphareign](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee59a6/32.png) [@alphareign](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphareign)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986/66 "2015-10-27T23:52:28Z")
For what it’s worth. > [@](#): > > Dyson agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists, and has written that “[one] of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas.”[56] However, he believes that existing simulation models of climate fail to account for some important factors, and hence the results will contain too much error to reliably predict future trends. Source: [Freeman Dyson - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Climate_change) Yeah, yeah, it’s Wikipedia which may not make it the best source, but it is a source and Wikipedia has thus been right on subjects in which I am knowledgible. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986/67 "2015-10-28T00:23:40Z")
> [@alphareign](#): > > For what it’s worth. > Source: [Freeman Dyson - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Climate_change) > > Yeah, yeah, it’s Wikipedia which may not make it the best source, but it is a source and Wikipedia has thus been right on subjects in which I am knowledgible. Already noted in this thread, Dyson is just tossing huge bones to his current denier peers but still offers plausible deniabilities to the ones that are involved in the current research. He was not always this way. [http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/files/Dyson\_Energy\_1977.pdf](http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/files/Dyson_Energy_1977.pdf) > [@](#): > > It is highly unlikely that the particular emergency program here proposed will ever be implemented. My discussion of it is enormously oversimplified. The purpose of this paper is to begin a process of mental preparation which may enable us to have realistic plans ready if ever the danger of catastrophe from CO2 accumulation becomes acute. To have plans ready is a form of life insurance, valuable even if the threatened catastrophe never happens. And there are many other useful purposes which a global reserve stock of organic materials might serve, quite apart from its use as a buffer against atmospheric CO2. > [@](#): > > There seems to be no law of physics or of ecology that would prevent us from taking action to halt or reverse the growth of atmospheric COZ within a few years if this should become necessary. Two methods of withdrawing carbon from the atmosphere have been described, among many possible alternatives. One is to plant fast-growing trees on a massive scale on marginal land; the other is to grow and harvest swamp-plants and convert them into humus or peat. The possible scale and speed of these operations appear to be limited by the availability of fertilizer rather than by land or financial costs. The establishment of such a “carbon bank” in the form of trees or peat is not to be regarded as a permanent solution of the CO\* problem. > > It is a stop-gap measure to hold the atmospheric CO, level down for a few decades and buy time in which a permanent shift from reliance on fossil fuels to renewable photosynthetic (or nuclear) fuels can be completed.‘\* That was from 1976. And indeed the problem is more acute now. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986/68 "2015-10-28T13:10:07Z")
The best way to sequester carbon is to bury our garbage in deep landfills like old quarries…that way, we will be making future energy supplies (methane, coal) for our descendants. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986/69 "2015-10-28T13:37:03Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > The best way to sequester carbon is to bury our garbage in deep landfills like old quarries… But how would we get them down there? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-scientist-freeman-dyson-says-global-warming-isnt-real/734986.md?page=3)